Kansas shelter dog gets new home in St. Charles

Ranger, a shelter dog from Emporia, Kansas, enjoyed an unusual trip Thursday to his new home in St. Charles.

Covering almost 650 miles, the trek required the cooperation of several pilots, a Kansas shelter, rescue organizations and one dedicated family.

"This whole thing has been unbelievable," said Kelli Cameron of St. Charles, Ranger's new owner. "It really is a miracle he's still alive.

Kelli Cameron pets her new dog Ranger while her son Everett, 3, looks at him in the Atlantic Airlines parking lot at Chicago Executive Airport today. Ranger was going to be euthanized if he had not been adopted and was flown from a shelter in Kansas to Wheeling. (Lane Christiansen /Tribune)

Ranger's tale began in Emporia, Kansas, where animal control workers found him last summer wandering the street as a stray. Employees fell in love with the black, grey and white pointer mix, but couldn't place him in a home and didn't want to put him down.

"We had such a horrible time finding a place for him to go," said Peggy Derrick, director of the shelter. "We've been trying desperately to get him adopted out."

In St. Charles, Kelli Cameron eventually stumbled across a Facebook post labeled "urgent" describing Ranger and warning that he was about to be put down. Something about the dog's smiling face sent Cameron into action. She initially tried to place him with a friend but that didn't pan out. After weeks of delivering daily "Ranger updates" to her husband, Chris, he surprised her with a plan of his own.

After that, Cameron said a Cape Cod, Mass., rescue organization hooked up with the shelter and another rescue group in Kansas. The ad hoc committee then coordinated volunteer pilots to fly Ranger from Kansas to his new home in Illinois, with two stopovers, one in Missouri and a second in Iowa.

To find the pilots, Liz Bondarek, who volunteers with an animal rescue group in Massachusetts, reached out to Pilots N Paws, which transports rescue animals. Three pilots volunteered to fly a leg of the trip, with one winding up driving her part after ice in Kansas grounded the plane.

Bondarek said she realizes some people won't be able to understand the herculean efforts undertaken on behalf of one shelter mutt.

"Every time (rescue groups) lose a dog, a piece of us dies with that dog," she said. "These are little, precious souls to us. They don't deserve to die like surplus."

The dedication displayed by the pilots, the rescue groups and the Kansas shelter inspired

Cameron, a stay-at-home mom of two boys, to volunteer for animal welfare agencies in her area.

"This has just opened my eyes up to there (being) so many dogs in need," Cameron said.